The Dark Side of Tea, India (59 images)

India is the second largest tea producer in the world. But while its green leaves are on the shelves of every supermarket and tea boutique across the globe, women workers still live under the remnants of a slavery system conceived under British colonialism.

Tea is one of the biggest industries in India, accounting for 14 percent of world tea exports and employing 3,5 million people, the vast majority of them women. Here, managers still roam on horses, dressed in sleek shirts and...more »

India is the second largest tea producer in the world. But while its green leaves are on the shelves of every supermarket and tea boutique across the globe, women workers still live under the remnants of a slavery system conceived under British colonialism.

Tea is one of the biggest industries in India, accounting for 14 percent of world tea exports and employing 3,5 million people, the vast majority of them women. Here, managers still roam on horses, dressed in sleek shirts and shorts in homage to old British custom. Yet, just few hundred meters away from their leafy offices, more than 2,000 tea workers have died of malnutrition in the past 15 years, while scores of others have ended up working as stonecrushers, maids or prostitutes in a vain attempt to escape misery.

Uprooted from their ancestral lands and now hosted in isolated, rundown colonies lost amid the plantations, women pluckers earn less than two dollars per day, half the minimum wage set by the government. With their housing, healthcare, education and pension conditional to their lifetime staying in the garden, they have no properties and cannot emigrate, change job or break the chains which have kept them bonded for generations. In the frequent case of tea garden closures, their wages, water supplies and food rations are cut overnight, leaving them with no choice but to starve.

We went to India to investigate one of the most pityless industries of our times.« less